I had a bit of a Hermione Granger in Prisoner of Azkaban moment looking at this photo ("is that what my hair really looks like from the back?"**) but at least I'm pleased with how the sweater looks.

I ended up knitting both the body and sleeves a bit longer than specified in the pattern in order to get the right fit and this led to me running perilously short of yarn by the time I got to the neck. By the time I'd done the two sets of decreases in the reverse stocking stitch section of the cowl it was clear that I wasn't going to have enough yarn to be able to knit the neck as written. Of course I could have ordered more yarn but I was really impatient to wear the sweater and besides, for some reason, even though I'd tried on the sample and looked at the pictures I'd kind of remembered the neck as a funnel rather than a cowl. So I knit a funnel as follows: once I got to the end of the raglan shaping I worked two more repeats of the raglan decreases to get down to 80 sts. Then I knit 4 vertical repeats of the Warriston stitch pattern and topped it off with the i-cord bind-off.

I'm really happy with the result. The funnel neck fits really nicely inside the collar of my coat (no need for a swarf with this sweater), it's still cosy but there's not too much fabric round my neck.

The Donegal Soft is lovely too - as the name suggests it's a much softer yarn some other Irish tweeds and the colour is fantastic. I bought it at Kate's stand at Woolfest on a ridiculously cold and wet Cumbrian day and the bright orange yarn just seemed to promise that I would be warm again at some point in the future.

* NB I ran a bit short hence the neck alterations
** I tried to find the clip but You Tube suddenly turned into a very scary place